Mike's commentary · Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment, Session 914

The "Reading Guide" and "Chapter Highlights" for this chapter were summarized by an AI editor based on the main text below; they are not things Mike said during the lecture. The main text comes from Mike's commentary, and the block quotes are Seth's original words (the portions Mike read aloud).

Introduction

This chapter begins with Jane feeling unsettled before her birthday because of readers' letters and a television psychic program. Seth then points out: the belief that life has meaning is biologically inherent, and it is also a prerequisite for the vitality of the individual and the species; science excludes subjective values, yet overlooks what human beings actually live for. He discusses value fulfillment, psychological migration, the narrowness of evolutionary theory, the imbalance between reason and intuition, imagination as a bridge between inner and outer, and also touches on emotional achievement and so-called mental retardation. After the session, Jane worries that the book is turning into a criticism of everything, and Rob adds his understanding of psychic gatherings.

Key Points of This Chapter

• The belief that life has meaning is biologically inherent and is a prerequisite for individual health and the vitality of the species.
• Science excludes subjective values, yet the emotions, desires, and intentions that people actually live by are precisely what science does not study; if science does not expand its definition of reality, it will lose its function.
• The true driving force behind human migration and exploration is psychological value fulfillment, not the pressure of survival.
• Current concepts of evolution lean toward the human species and follow a narrow route; rationality and intuitive, emotional capacities need to be integrated, and people cannot be evaluated solely by intellectual standards.
• Imagination connects the inner world with the outer world, as well as emotion with intellect; what is called intellectual disability may be one facet of specialized emotional capacity.

Main Text

Before the Session: The Day Before Jane's 51st Birthday

May 7, 1980, 9:02 p.m., the day before Jane's 51st birthday. Rob made a note: tomorrow is Jane's birthday, but today her mood was terrible, because she had been provoked twice.

The first time was at noon, when she received a pile of unpleasant letters. One of them was from a mentally ill person, a full 20 pages, in which this person wanted back all the notes, manuscripts, and poetry collections he had sent to Jane over the years—things sent bit by bit over many years, and now he wanted them all returned. Where were they supposed to find all that? The second was a letter from a woman, informing them that she was writing a book dictated personally by Seth—she claimed she had connected with Seth. The third was a long letter from a man who, for reasons we could not agree with, declared that we were his counterparts.

Rob said: In these cases, it seems as if we could never communicate effectively with the individuals involved. Although we sincerely tried to understand why they wanted to contact us. To put it bluntly, we were simply not on the same frequency; we could not get on the same page with them, and we did not understand the purpose of their letters, because we were not on the same channel. Actually, Rob was also somewhat angry—if you cannot get on the same page, what is there left to say?

The second irritation came when Jane, while waiting for the session, happened to flip the TV to a program called "Psychic Carnival." In the last few minutes of the program, in a large open-air venue, a self-proclaimed psychic medium was apparently speaking on behalf of a great conference located on Saturn or Uranus—he claimed to have connected with that great conference on that planet, with voices from an interstellar civilization, relaying to the people of Earth a resounding message of a general nature. Remember the word "resounding"—the vocabulary was all grandiose: galaxy, star system, universe, humanity, civilization, all in that vein, but the content was general: nothing of actual substance, nothing that could ever be wrong, no real meaning. When he finished, the several hundred people present all applauded.

Jane was a bit unhappy, and I will say it for her: What the hell is all this? She said if I had known beforehand that I would run into this kind of thing because of the Seth material—I would absolutely never have done the Seth material. She really could not stand this kind of channeling ritual. She was not saying she would abandon the Seth material, but rather that if this was what being a psychic medium meant, she would rather not do it. She would not mix herself up with the so-called spirit world of strange forces and supernatural nonsense—many people in spiritual circles have this tendency: connecting with the Buddha, connecting with Guanyin Bodhisattva, connecting with this one or that one, and some even connecting with Seth. I have talked about this kind of thing many times before.

She said, I could not help but laugh; we did not deliberately get mixed up in these things, but other people dragged us into it—treating us as the same kind of people as those mediums.

So I asked: If a person can speak for a being like Seth, yet still remain detached, undisturbed by all the strange forces and supernatural nonsense around them, how can that be done?

Rob said: As of now, I think we have done quite well. The two of them really did do quite well—during their lifetime they never participated in the activities of any such organization or group, although they were invited once or twice, but they quickly withdrew. They also accepted some television and radio interviews, but always kept a very low profile. This style of conduct ensured that the Seth material was never manipulated or turned into superstition.

Rob said: Maybe I should focus instead on that wonderful letter we received today—the one from that actress, along with the birthday cards and flowers. You see Jane rapidly shifting her focus of attention.

Simply put, we live in a three-dimensional world, and we are still affected by all kinds of things, and the two of them were no exception. They were affected by readers' letters—encouraging, positive letters made them happy, and then there were the strange ones like those just mentioned; then they were made thoroughly disgusted by that television program, feeling that this was what the spiritual world felt like, and that going on television made it seem that channelers and mediums alike were all doing this kind of thing.

Then Seth came through. He obviously knew all of this, but he did not mention a word of it, and spoke only of important matters.

The Biological Trust That Life Has Meaning

Seth begins by saying: people have a biologically innate knowledge—that life has meaning. People are born believing that their lives have meaning. It is strange: although our world, our society, our science, our mainstream society keeps telling us that from a scientific point of view, life really has no meaning—once you die, it is over, just a few short decades, what meaning is there? Yet people are born with this stubborn conviction, always believing that life has meaning. If you did not believe that life has meaning, you would not go looking for meaning. You would not search for something that does not exist at all.

Why is it that when we are very young, in our teens in middle school, we already ask about the meaning of human life? We spend our whole lives asking this question. Behind this there is an innate trust—remember, it is biological, inborn, written into the genes. You know what: you have meaning. It is just that this meaning is very hard to feel in three-dimensional consciousness, but you are certain it exists, so you are searching for it.

They share that biologically ingrained trust with all other living creatures.

Human beings, like all other species, are searching for this trust—that our lives have meaning. This is beyond doubt. Although they have not found it yet, not finding it does not mean not believing; they believe that life has meaning, they are certain of it, they just have not found it yet.

For your species, Homo sapiens, the belief in life's meaning is a necessity.

Never mind other species for now, just speaking of human beings: your belief in the meaning of life is a necessity. Such a belief is indispensable in the precise functioning of the genetic system—in other words, your genetic system is built on the premise that "life has meaning." It is a prerequisite for individual health and for the overall vitality of any species. Remember, it is a prerequisite. So why do people who cannot find meaning in life commit suicide? The reason lies right here.

Your greatest accomplishments are precisely those brought about by civilizations in which people had the greatest confidence in the meaning of life in general, and in the meaning of the individual within the framework of life.

Humanity's greatest achievements, all achievements in every field, were brought about by civilizations and cultures that believed life has meaning. In those times—from the earliest and most ancient eras, to use human concepts of time—people had far greater confidence in the meaning of life and in the meaning of the individual within the framework of life than they do now.

I hope that your species is moving toward an era of greater psychological integration.

What is psychological integration? It is the integration of rational and intuitive knowledge. When the intellect is taught to use its abilities in a far less restricted way, when the intuitive and reasoning abilities can work together in a much smoother manner, then the emotional and intuitive knowledge that life has meaning can find clearer and more precise expression.

Regardless of what your sciences say, as long as they exclude certain values from their frame of reference, they are implying that those values therefore have no foundation. So the reasoning qualities of the mind are turned away from any exploration that might bring acceptable scientific evidence for such values.

The things that science does not accept—feelings, thoughts, ideas, consciousness—are all excluded from its framework, which means science considers them to have no foundation. But the more you exclude these things, the less likely you are to find any clues that these values truly exist. If you first judge them to be unscientific, then how can you possibly find evidence that they can become scientific? You inevitably will not find it.

What Science Does Not Study Is Precisely What People Live For

Seth then points out a thought-provoking phenomenon:

Human beings live according to values that science ignores.

The things science ignores are precisely what people live for. What does science not study? Science does not study love, does not study romantic love, yet all of us live for love. In this world, apart from love, you have nothing—and by love I mean it in the broad sense, not just love between men and women. Yet love is not within the scope of scientific research. More broadly speaking, your feelings, personal experiences, your desires, your joys, your impulses, your visions, your intentions—these are the main driving forces by which you live in this world, yet none of them fall within the scope of scientific research. What science studies are lifeless, cold mathematical formulas and physical formulas.

Seth here hits the nail on the head: the things science does not study are all the things you live for. Is that not a ridiculous thing? Science has studied something it considers very important.

In this passage Seth emphasizes and repeats this quietly—he does not say it only once, so you know the importance of this statement. I will also repeat it once more: What science does not study is often what we human beings live for. Why do you live? What is the meaning of your life? What is the driving force of your life? What is the value of your life? None of these fall within the scope of scientific research.

For that reason, science has generated its own built-in malady—after its first great era of exploration—

Seth is still being objective: in its first great era of exploration, science did have a positive and constructive role. When humanity first used science as a tool to explore the world, it was beneficial. But later, when science began to exclude subjective experience, declaring those things to be unscientific or even pseudoscience, it imposed a definition upon the world: whatever science studies is meaningful, and whatever it does not study is meaningless. This kind of demarcation turned it against the course of historical and epochal development, and it even became a stumbling block, no longer a driving force.

Therefore it must expand its meaning of reality.

If science is to develop, it must fundamentally redefine the meaning of reality. We have all seen the latest movie The Matrix—the fourth one is called Resurrections¹—and the most classic line in it is: What is real? Science must reexamine this question. The definition of reality should be expanded; it can no longer remain stuck in the Newtonian era, with the standards of classical physics or objective physics. The times have already developed, and that concept of physics is old and outdated. We now have enough wisdom and ability to explore these spiritual, emotional, and subjective experiential things—we are not human beings from several hundred years ago, and we will not be led around by superstition. Do not refrain from studying these things just because you are afraid of being dragged into superstition. Those things that science is not good at are precisely what we human beings should truly study.

Otherwise it will become a habitual irony upon itself, a handmaiden to the fall of an obsolete technology.

If it does not redefine reality, if it does not expand its definition, science will become a joke—a handmaiden to the fall of an obsolete technology. It was once useful to human development, but if it continues to insist on the objective worldview and materialism, it can only become a handmaiden that was once glorious, abandoning its early proclaimed investigation into truth and the nature of reality.

What did science proclaim at the very beginning? That it studies only truth, only reality. Open up the old universities—whether Harvard, Stanford, or Oxford—their mottos basically all say: study only truth, study only the nature of reality. That was indeed the case back then. And at that time philosophy held a very important position, regarded as the overarching framework of all sciences. Philosophy was only gradually perfected and systematized in Western society beginning in the era of Plato, and Plato was the first to discuss philosophy as a discipline².

What is philosophy? Philosophy is a way of looking at things. Science is also a way of looking at reality, and so is religion—we all use different methods to look at this world. But in the last two or three hundred years, science has become dominant to the exclusion of all other disciplines, declaring that its way of looking at the world is the only correct one, and that everyone else's is wrong. From that point on, science turned against itself—it became unobjective and untruthful.

You claim to study truth, yet you place the areas you cannot study, the things you temporarily do not understand, the unknown domains, all outside the scope of research—and not only do you not study them, you also label them "unscientific" or "pseudoscience." Whoever goes to study them, you ridicule them and attack them. This is the most excessive thing science has done. You could say: I do not understand, I do not comprehend those unknown domains, those things in the energy realm or the consciousness realm—science is not good at them—but we respect your research into them. These would all be correct attitudes. But they did not do this.

Then they may become an appendage to life.

Just like the Catholic Church, which lost its dominant grasp over the world and lost its position as the sole official arbiter of reality. In the past, whatever the Church said, everyone believed—if the Church said the Earth was the center, then the Earth was the center; if the Church said the Sun was the center, then the Sun was the center. But who listens to the Church now? It has been reduced to a mere appendage. It once played a positive role as a guide for humanity's exploration of the universe, but later, due to its own limitations, it became what it is today.

If science does not expand its definition of the cognition of reality, it will eventually become what religion is today—dispensable. People's understanding of the world will no longer listen to it, because its definition is too limited. Just as today, if a religion wants to tell you how the universe came into being, at most you will politely nod out of religious respect and move on; you will not debate it anymore, because you feel there is nothing worth debating. If science does not strive to improve itself in the future, it will also end up with this same result.

Value Fulfillment and the Current of History

On the whole, in the course of human development, and in some of the important processes of this development of humanity, the efforts and methods that oppose value fulfillment will gradually eliminate themselves, because in the end they will lose their effectiveness.

The current of history cannot be stopped. Human beings are born with meaning, with the function of value fulfillment. Whoever tries to deny it may have some effect for a while, but in the end they will be cast aside, because it does not work. This is the warning Seth wants to sound for us: whoever denies value fulfillment, denies the meaning of life, is driving history in reverse, and will eventually be crushed by the wheels of history. It is not that history has never seen this before — there have been many times when theories, sciences, religions, and groups that denied human value fulfillment and denied the meaning of life were all eventually cast aside by history.

Technology in itself is not wrong.

Seth immediately pulls the conversation back. Human beings have an innate tendency to use tools, and science is just a tool; technology is only an extension of those abilities. When people act according to the directives of value fulfillment, they can use science as a tool, and those tools are very effective — provided that science serves human value fulfillment, rather than denying these fulfillments, this subjectivity.

Your technology, as it now stands, is necessarily to some important degree built upon a scientific philosophy that denies the concept of value fulfillment.

But Seth says "to some important degree" — not a complete denial. He cannot deny it completely, because the things scientists do are themselves a kind of subjective cognition, subjective thought. If all value fulfillment were denied, scientists would be denying the meaning and value of their own existence. So you can see that Seth's speech is watertight.

As a result, your technology can no longer function, and is in danger of being unable to function.

That is why there have been important events on a national and worldwide scale, such as the nuclear leak at Three Mile Island³, and some other near-nuclear accidents whose names are hard to recall. Science will become unable to keep running, and will turn into something that threatens human development.

Many control panels in nuclear power plants are designed as though consciousness had no part in them at all, as though the plants were controlled by other machines rather than by people, with control buttons that are inconvenient or basically out of reach, as though the people who drew up the designs had completely forgotten what human beings are like mentally or physically.

He is pointing to the irrationality in these specific designs. Now look at the overall purpose:

Now the overall purpose should be the utilization of energy.

Humanity's main purpose with nuclear power plants is to obtain energy, to make good use of energy. The desire to bring light and warmth to millions of households is a good purpose. But:

The philosophy behind it denies the validity of the subjective values that give human life its reason for being, so that the intent is undermined, because that value has been forgotten, and life is threatened.

This is explained more thoroughly in The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events. Nuclear energy represents the peak of humanity's use of energy, but technology itself is not the problem; the problem is technology's lack of respect for and indifference to life itself — for example, ignoring the threat to human survival posed by building nuclear power plants in densely populated areas, where a nuclear disaster or nuclear leak would threaten human life.

Many people may not understand why developed countries are now moving away from nuclear power, such as France and Germany, these major nuclear power nations — they were among the earliest to develop nuclear power generation⁴, France is a world leader in nuclear power generation⁵, and many of China's nuclear power plants were designed with French assistance⁶ — yet they themselves have imposed a great many restrictions and no longer use nuclear power for electricity.

In your neighboring countries, and in your own country, there are grassroots organizations, and sects engaged in various quests, that are growing.

In the America of the 1980s, there were grassroots organizations among the people, and various sects, that were growing. Those were small groups of people coming together:

Seeking once again intellectual reasons to support their innate emotional knowledge that life has meaning.

These grassroots groups have been researching and understanding this innate emotional knowledge that "life has meaning." What is being referred to here is more the advocates of the New Age movement.

So these groups represent the beginning of a new journey.

It represents humanity entering a new journey, a new era, which for us human beings is as important as the sea voyages in search of new continents. This present exploration, on the level of emotional knowledge, of the value of human life and the value of life itself, is as important as the voyages of discovery that found new continents in the development of human civilization.

Migration Is Psychological, Not Driven by Survival

Seeds are blown by the wind and thus propagate their kind. Many people speculate about how early humans traveled from one continent to another. People say it was because of the struggle for survival, that humans were truly forced to expand their physical boundaries.

People say that survival needs forced humans to migrate from one place to another, but Seth says that is not the case:

Yet the true movement of humanity has always been psychological, or if you prefer, psychic, involving the exploration of concepts.

Humans did not move passively for the sake of survival. In fact, psychologically and psychically, humans have always wanted to achieve their value fulfillment -- this is the driving force behind everything, and it is also the inner driving force of humanity's overall development. It is not that wherever the water and grass were lush, people had to go there. That is the viewpoint of evolutionism, a kind of speculation and conjecture modern people make about early humans, ignoring humanity's own subjective initiative and neglecting the need to pursue psychological and psychic growth.

The survival of humanity basically depends upon its meaningful belief in its existence.

New Religious Groups and the Genetic Path of Wisdom

But these new religions or groups, then, opened up new areas of speculation and belief along the genetic path of wisdom.

What these new groups explore and pursue is precisely the meaning of life and the value of life, and this accords with genetic, biological characteristics—because biological nature itself carries the meaning and value of life. They entered unknown territory, and in the early stages they could only proceed through guesswork and belief—this is called speculation.

And if some of their present beliefs seem ridiculous for intellectual reasons, then because such groups follow the dictates of value fulfillment, those beliefs are ultimately meaningful, however faintly.

The ideas held by those groups, seen through a scientific, intellectual lens, are utterly ridiculous—for example, the slogan "beliefs create reality" is, from a scientific standpoint, quite ridiculous. But because it follows the dictates of value fulfillment, no matter how faint it is now, it will ultimately bring meaningful results. The short-term impact may not be that dramatic, but its far-reaching significance for the overall development of human civilization cannot be ignored. Because they accord with our inner guidance of value fulfillment, they are the wisdom inherent in our genes, and they do not yield to the denial of any so-called scientific argument or professional authority—this is the inner light of humanity, the light of the psyche, which cannot be extinguished, cannot be altered.

In terms of the intellect you are accustomed to using, it is easy to see only the ludicrous behavior of such groups, and in that light they appear very ridiculous.

But a scientist who is willing to threaten the very survival of life on this planet in order to increase the convenience of living—that is the behavior that truly shows itself to be ridiculous.

Scientists think the behavior of these groups is ridiculous, yet those actions that, under the banner of "increasing the convenience of living," threaten the very lives of other human beings—that is what is truly ridiculous. On the one hand they want to improve human life, and on the other hand they threaten human life itself.

The Triple Narrowness of Evolutionary Theory

Most concepts about evolution have a problem, and that is they are all biased in one direction.

Human beings look at evolution with a bias:

Human beings mainly look at evolution with a bias. Biased toward what? All biased toward the human side, at the expense of other species. And thinking about evolution has also followed very narrow lines of continuity. This kind of concept has a great deal to do with what you think you yourselves are, what you consider to be human characteristics, and how you look at those who have more or less departed from those standards.

All three points are wrong: first, it is biased only toward human beings; second, it considers evolution only from the human angle; third, it holds a continuity viewpoint, assuming that evolution must be continuous. Both narrow and biased.

Now man needs to feel that he is progressing.

Why does man want to come up with a theory of evolution? Because man wants to know that he is evolving, that he is progressing, and does not want to see himself standing still. So the theory of evolution fits very well with man's inner need to progress. But:

Technological progress itself, by comparison, represents only a very superficial level.

Whenever progress is mentioned, people talk about technological progress, yet science is only a very superficial level of human progress. Unless it is supported by the growth of emotional understanding — only when science takes emotion and subjective feelings into account is it no longer superficial. If it only considers the objective world, then this science is superficial.

In such a progress, man not only feels his oneness with himself, but also his oneness with the rest of nature.

The Imbalance Between Intellect and Intuition

Some people are quite skilled intellectually, extremely skilled, and their reasoning ability is beyond doubt.

These geniuses are very strong in logic, beyond doubt. But:

Yet in terms of your evaluations, he cannot see the part they quite lack, for example their lack of emotional and spiritual development.

Many scientists are geniuses intellectually, yet they lack emotional and spiritual development, and this limits their overall development. Of course, such people are not considered mentally handicapped.

I will keep speaking of a balance between intuition and this reasoning ability, and I hope to lead you toward a union of those abilities.

Seth says he has always hoped to push us toward a balance between reasoning ability and intuition. Intuition has no logic to it; it is simply a feeling. We often say women have strong intuition, while secretly criticizing them for lacking logical reasoning ability. But the correct approach is to combine intuitive power with rational reasoning ability.

Because what they can bring you when they work together would necessarily appear as a brand-new kind of ability. What kind of ability? One that combines the best elements of both, but in such a way that both are immeasurably strengthened.

When rational ability and intuitive ability are combined, both are strengthened at the same time, as if possessing a brand-new ability. Whether we call it supernatural power or miracles—telepathy, precognition—these only come about when intuitive power and reasoning power are put together, and both are enhanced.

He also wants to emphasize that, in terms of the present knowledge system you have already established, your current beliefs limit the complete and free operation of your intellect, because science has placed so many taboos that restrict the areas the intellect is free to explore. However, I am not advocating relying on emotion over intellect, nor is the reverse correct.

The existing knowledge system limits the free development of the intellect—it is not that the intellect is wrong, but that too many rules and restrictions have been placed on it: this is not allowed, that is not right, this cannot be studied, that cannot be studied. Once you set up all these rules and restrictions, it becomes very hard for the intellect to function at its fullest. For the intellect to truly work, these restrictions must be lifted. He says this does not mean the intellect is wrong, nor is he advocating the opposite, that emotion should be supreme. Intellect and emotion, rational thinking and intuitive application—these two must be combined. Regarding this part, The Magical Approach has already explained it very thoroughly, and this passage emphasizes it again in turn.

The fact remains that when you evaluate your fellow creatures, your intellect is emphasized far more than emotion.

When you evaluate the performance of your companions, you always consider only the intellectual aspect—whether their IQ is high enough, whether their ability to handle matters is adequate—and you never ask about their emotional achievements. Many people would say: what do you mean by emotional achievements? Are you talking about emotional intelligence? Let alone spiritual achievements—those cannot be understood at all.

Some people would score high on any hypothetical test of emotional achievement, yet by the standards of your society, in certain circumstances they might be labeled mentally handicapped.

Some people have extremely strong emotional abilities, but by your human standards, they are considered idiots, mentally handicapped. In terms of emotional achievement, no matter how you design the test questions, they would always score high—because in emotional achievement they are simply far above ordinary people. But we humans do not measure this area at all, do not value it, feel it is unimportant, and only care about the intellectual part.

Humanity has at least begun a journey toward emotional achievement, just as it began to understand and develop intellectual ability, and ultimately the two must walk hand in hand.

People are beginning to pay more attention to emotional achievement. To put emotional achievement plainly, value fulfillment itself is a kind of emotional achievement—the meaning of life, the mission of life, are these not all emotional aspects?

The Emotionally Incompetent Are Regarded as Geniuses

A brilliant mathematician or scientist or even artist, accepted as a genius in any academic circle, may be an emotional incompetent, yet no one treats him as mentally deficient, as an idiot.

Emotionally he is very lacking, yet no one thinks he is mentally deficient. Here I need to make clear that what I am talking about is not the eccentric behavior of creative people or others in that regard, but rather the lack of understanding of emotional values. It is not that these scientists and artists behave strangely in their mannerisms—those oddities do indeed exist—what Seth is saying is that they lack understanding in emotional values, not a matter of surface behavior, and that is not what I want to discuss.

In human terms, all variations are necessary.

From the perspective of the overall development of humanity, whether it is the idiot, or the high IQ, high EQ individual, all variations are necessary. It is like taking one person as a representative of humanity: he decides, for himself but also for the whole, to specialize in a particular area. For example, his musical ability is relatively strong, or his athletic ability is relatively strong; he strengthens certain abilities, displaying them with the greatest persistence and intelligence, while at the same time almost completely ignoring certain other areas—when he focuses on certain areas, he necessarily ignores and shuts out other areas.

But in your society, the abilities of the reasoning mind are considered to be opposed to the intuitive abilities.

We think that the stronger a person's rational ability is, the worse his intuitive or emotional ability is; the two are opposites.

So your concept of what a person is or should be largely ignores emotional achievement and the understanding of emotions.

When we evaluate a person, we never consider his emotional achievements or his understanding of emotions. Whether it is emotional intelligence or personal subjective pursuits, these are often not that important when evaluating a person; more emphasis is placed on his practical abilities—technology, science, problem-solving ability.

A couple of days ago I watched an interview with Elon Musk⁷. He said that in the past when he hired people—building Tesla, doing rocket launches, so many tech enterprises—he only looked at ability, at problem-solving ability, intelligence, IQ, and nothing else; he used the smartest people. He said he was wrong. He said the most important thing is a person's character, those inner qualities; whether IQ is high or not, whether intelligence is high or not, these are not important. This is his own life insight at this stage of his life. He started his business in his twenties and continued for so many years, and only in these recent weeks did he suddenly have this realization: so it was not like that after all. So it turns out that in "having both virtue and talent," virtue comes first—our Chinese ancestors said this long ago: have both virtue and talent, with virtue as the priority. The virtue here is what Seth calls emotional ability.

Intellectual Disability: Another Kind of Specialization

Others may be mature, intelligent, aware of their own feelings and those of others, intuitively knowing how to handle relationships.

Some people are not good at technology, but their emotional capacity is very strong, their emotional intelligence is very high, and they intuitively know how to get along well with others. They are very popular and do not need to do anything special. As adults, they may even be the best parents.

Yet if they do not conform to certain artificial intellectual standards, they may be regarded as intellectually disabled.

In some respects they may be judged by our scientists as mentally deficient or intellectually disabled, but in many areas -- interpersonal relationships, emotional processing -- they are very strong.

They are actually the same as the people mentioned earlier, but at an equal position on the other end.

Their importance is the same as the importance of those scientists mentioned earlier to human development.

It is as though certain members of the human species, for their own reasons and again also for the sake of the whole, specialized this time in the use of emotional abilities, and those people are usually considered intellectually disabled.

The intellectually disabled or so-called idiots you see are actually people who, in order to develop their emotional abilities, deliberately shut down their so-called IQ or reasoning ability, closed off that part, and allowed themselves to focus on developing emotional communication abilities. I gave this example before: many scientists, even great scientists, often have children who are idiots or intellectually disabled, or whose intellectual development is delayed. Actually this is the greatest gift to them -- it forces them to communicate with their children in ways other than reason, opening up their other abilities. But they do not recognize this; instead they beat their chests and stomp their feet in anguish -- we are so smart, why did we give birth to such a mentally deficient child? They do not realize that this child is such a rare gift to them, one that can stimulate emotional communication with them -- not just communication through reason, language, and logic. But they do not discover this.

I will have much more to say on that particular subject in the future, because for now we can only discuss certain examples.

Imagination: The Bridge Between Inner and Outer

Humanity is a species that specializes in the use of imagination, and without imagination there would be no need for language.

Human beings are very adept at using imagination; this is a distinctive feature of humanity. People are able to imagine images or events that are not present before them from a particular viewpoint.

The practical use of imagination is one of the most important characteristics of your human species.

And imagination is the connection between the inner world of your reality and the outer world of your experience.

Imagination is the connection between our inner world and our outer world -- imagination always begins in the inner world and is ultimately realized in the outer world. How much is realized, to what degree it is realized, the bridge in between is imagination. It connects your emotions and your intellect. The outer world can be seen as the more intellectual part, while the initial impetus of imagination in the inner world is a kind of emotion -- what you want, what you like, these are all emotions; but to realize it in the physical world, you must respect objective laws, and this requires intellect. So imagination connects the inner world on one end and the outer world on the other; it connects intellect on one end and sensibility and emotion on the other.

All species are connected to one another, so as I said earlier, when you think, you do not think only for yourselves; you also specialize in thinking on behalf of the rest of nature, which physically sustains you.

When you use imagination to realize your personal value fulfillment, you are not only thinking for yourselves, but at the same time you are thinking for all other species, for the whole of nature, for the whole earth -- only you are not aware of it.

Then I will discuss the intellect and the imagination, and the subtle variations that unite the two.

The intellect and the imagination, and the subtle changes that unite these two together.

In so doing, I hope to give you a truer picture of your own dimension, and to continue the discussion of genetically inspired endowments and seeming defects.

Combining the intellect and the imagination, showing you a truer picture of your world -- the following chapters will discuss these things.

Then he said the session was over, the dictation was over, the chapter was over, and he wished everyone good night.

Jane's Worries and Rob's Response

After the session, Jane added a comment. She said: But I don't want the Seth books to end up being a criticism of everything. She was a bit uncomfortable because Seth had made too many criticisms of science. She said I don't want this book -- the book Seth is dictating through me -- to seem like it's commenting on everything in our physical reality, criticizing everything. She didn't want Seth to become a critic of the actual society.

Rob said: Since the three of us discuss what happens in this world, and we don't approve of most of it, then it looks as if we are criticizing these things. That's just how it is -- we don't like what's happening in this world, and we discuss these things, so it ends up looking like we're criticizing them.

Jane said: I know. But I want this book to be reassuring, to bring peace of mind.

You see, this statement actually reflects another layer of Jane's compassion. From this one sentence you can see where Jane's heart lies -- why she could connect with Seth, why Seth transmitted through her. You'll find that although she had many limitations in her own health issues, her compassion was very fundamental, not requiring theory, intellect, or analysis -- it was innate. So when Seth offered many critical opinions about science and the current state of humanity, she would say: Let's not put it that way. If this book keeps talking like that, readers will feel uneasy. They'll think our society is full of problems everywhere, that this world is full of problems. She said I can understand all that, but we hope this book can make readers feel reassured after reading it, not anxious. She didn't want to sell anxiety.

From just this one sentence, you can see that Jane's inner compassion came from the bottom of her heart.

Rob's Note: Understanding the Psychic Fair

Next is Rob's note. He says that Jane's mood today and our comments should not be misunderstood as our not understanding why people attend psychic fairs.

I think every person in that televised gathering was seeking information about the origin and nature of humanity. Even though from our perspective it seems too simplistic to assume there is a great council on a distant planet in the solar system, to us that concept, that idea, is an externalized distortion of the fact that each of us has a great council within ourselves.

Rob says: Their behavior is actually a form of what should be a greater council within our minds, within our inner world -- he expresses it in the form of an external, great council, which is a distorted expression.

But there are many divergent views here, and obviously studying the Seth material can hardly be said to be the only way to explore reality. Humanity is too many, too varied, to be satisfied with any one system of thought, or even with any interrelated systems of thought.

People are too varied; it is hard for them to accept only one set of values or one system of thought. They must explore different things -- this is a characteristic. The Seth material is not the only way to explore reality; there are many other ways. It is also correct and appropriate for others to explore using other methods.

Here Rob once again makes a fairly fair and impartial point -- to prevent everyone from generating unnecessary conflict or aversion toward those who attack spiritual people. They still look at this issue from a deeper and broader perspective. Although emotionally or intuitively they do not like that approach, after all these years of transmitting the Seth material, they can also look at issues from a higher perspective and recognize the rationality and necessity of those things existing. From this you can also see that their level of cognition in certain areas is actually not low -- although they are also affected by some emotional fluctuations.

注释与核实

1. Source: Warner Bros. Taiwan The Matrix Resurrections Official Trailer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iW7U5P81VM) ↩

2. Source: Richard Kraut, Plato (https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2026/entries/plato/) ↩

3. Source: U.S. Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy, 5 Facts to Know About Three Mile Island (https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-facts-know-about-three-mile-island) ↩

4. According to Mike's original words, "France, Germany, these nuclear power giants—they were the earliest to develop nuclear power generation"; upon verification, it should be "the first to use nuclear fission to produce usable electricity was the EBR-I reactor in Idaho, USA (1951); the first nuclear power plant to supply electricity to the grid was the Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant in the Soviet Union (1954), not France or Germany." (Source: U.S. Department of Energy, 9 Notable Facts About the World's First Nuclear Power Plant - EBR-I, 2019, https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/9-notable-facts-about-worlds-first-nuclear-power-plant-ebr-i) ↩

5. Source: International Energy Agency, Status of nuclear energy (https://www.iea.org/reports/the-path-to-a-new-era-for-nuclear-energy/status-of-nuclear-energy) ↩

6. Source: Électricité de France, EDF in China, 2015 (https://www.edf.fr/sites/default/files/contrib/groupe-edf/espaces-dedies/espace-medias/dp/edf_in_china.pdf) ↩

7. Source: Dwarkesh Patel, Elon Musk — "In 36 months, the cheapest place to put AI will be space" (https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/elon-musk?hide_intro_popup=true&open=false) ↩